The Georgetown Metropolitan

Rock Creek

This “notice” is posted in the window of the former Marvelous Market. It is complete and splendid jibberish.

There is no such thing as the “Right of Way Authority”. Or the Federal Registry System. 40 Mass Ave. is Union Station, which is where the “Railroad Police” might be expected to locate, if they were real too. There are such people as railroad police officers, but they work under the banner of their specific organization, like the Amtrak Police or the Union Pacific Police. There’s no federal “Railroad Police” agency. 425 1/2 North Broad St., Philadelphia is the address of a “RR Reading Railroad”, which was formed in 2014 and has two employees. This presumably has nothing to do with the famous Reading Railroad, which went bankrupt in the 1970s. Continue reading →

Photo by Ehpien.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Students successfully lobby for more representation on the Georgetown Community Partnership.
• Parklets in Georgetown held up over red tape.

1100 block of 31st St.

Last week GM reveled his much delayed State of Georgetown 2015. GM’s proud of his efforts and all, but the fact is that the BID’s State of Georgetown 2015 is a million times better. Check it out here.

Here are some of the fascinating data points that their report contains:

Stuff is Busy:

There’s a lot going on in the commercial corridors of Georgetown. There was a net gain of 19 stores (which differs from GM’s count, but that’s because the time frame and geographies are different). The office vacancy is low at 7.1%. Hotel occupancies rose to 72%. There are 13,000 people employed in the BID zone. And additional 15,000 work in Georgetown outside of the BID zone (one assumes that mostly includes GU and hospital employees).

As for job sectors, the biggest increase in Georgetown jobs was in education, with a 14% jump over the previous year. The biggest drop was a tie between retail trade jobs and information at -13%.

Commercial rents raised slightly with Class A space demanding $44/sqf on average and Class B/C demanding $39/sqf. Here’s all the commercial space in map form: Continue reading →

Photo by Alan Kotok.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Did you know there were once sections of Georgetown called Frogtown and Philadelphia?
• GU hospital turning away transgender patients.

1200 block of 34th St.

GM can no confirm that the four new applicants for liquor licenses in Georgetown are the four he identified last month. Those include:

• The Georgetown AMC
• Lady Camelia
• Chaia
• Kouzina (GM didn’t have the name last month, but this is the applicant he identified)

Here’s what each applicant has planned:

Georgetown AMC:

The theater doesn’t have really any changes planned, except presumably the sale of alcoholic drinks. They plan to sell drinks right up to the legal deadline: 2 am weekdays and 3 am weekends. They are applying for a Class C restaurant license, which allows for the sale of beer, wine and liquor.

What’s somewhat interesting for this applicant is that they’re pursuing a restaurant license (a C/R license). Other theaters in DC that sell alcohol, such as E St. Cinema, use a Multipurpose Facility license (a C/X license). Multipurpose facilities are theaters and art galleries, etc., which Georgetown AMC would appear to qualify as. And C/X licenses don’t require the licensee to receive a certain minimum amount of its revenue from food sales, whereas C/R licenses require the establishment to get at least 45% of its gross revenues from food sales.

Can a movie theater really get 45% of its revenues from popcorn, especially once it start selling booze? Why doesn’t the theater just get a C/X license? Because the moratorium prohibits them. (Yet another reason to ditch the moratorium).

We’ll see how this plays out… Continue reading →

Photo by Alan Kotok.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• It’s not technically in Georgetown, but it’s great news for the neighborhood that the recently closed West End Cinema is getting bought by Landmark Theaters.
• How’s the cat cafe going?